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Szentigrade writes "Popular Science is running a letter by Daniel Engber of the online Slate Magazine in which he offers the US Presidential nominees advice on using the full potential of the Internet upon their election into office. Some examples discussed in the letter include: a project already being developed that speeds up the patent approval process, a UK site that aims to improve government-citizen interactions, and perhaps most importantly, a call for government information to be 'presented in a standardized and widely used data format, like XML, so that anyone — in or out of government — could use and reconfigure it however they pleased.' Will 2009 be the first year of the E-President?"

The last thing that the neo-cons want is for more government-citizen interaction and less secrecy in their more 'sensitive' actions. The less that the citizens know, the better! All this government-citizen interaction just gets in the way of what they believe a government is supposed to do: give away hundreds of billions of dollars to sleazy corrupt hedge-fund managers and mercenary corporations, and to then just disappear when it's completely broke (along with everyone's pensions and 401-K plans).

Would anyone want to be entrusted to have to try and explain anything technical to Sarah Palin? The first DAZ-MO president (dumb-as-shit mommy)! God, I've got hundreds of them trying to drive their space shuttles (huge SUVs) around town, occasionally flipping them over and crashing into poles because they haven't quite mastered the art of feeding the kids, dialing the phone, changing the DVD, and driving a huge truck-sized vehicle in dense highway traffic.

And a Palin presidency? Just tell her that "this is what America wants and needs", make a huge payoff to the people who are really deciding the policies, and walk off with the billion-dollar no-bid contracts. Two months of a Palin presidency and even the staunchest liberals will be begging the military to take over the country. Just don't shoot us, please. Shoot them, instead. You know who we mean.

At this point the odds of a McCain presidency range from slim to nonexistent, depending on who you ask. According to CNN's electoral map, Obama has 192 electoral votes all but guaranteed, and can count on 85 more from states that are likely to go his way, giving him 277- and he needs 270 to win. So even if McCain wins every single red state, every single state that is leaning Republican, and all the races that are too close to call, he's going to lose. The Intrade prediction market predicts that Obama will

There are some tens of millions of voter registrations that have been thrown out over the past few years, predominantly by Republican secretaries-of-state, and predominantly from demographics that favor Democrats.

Throw out enough of the right (or is that left, or is that wrong) votes, and McCain can still win.

Chads and butterflies had little to do with the Florida results in 2000. Bush won because Katherin Harris, in the name of voter fraud, threw out some 30,000+ voter registrations in a wide dragnet looki

Obama ran an ad about McCain not using email. A little bit of Googling on Obama's part (does he know about Google) would have informed him that McCain has trouble typing because of his war injuries. Perhaps McCain will be more sensitive to the needs of physically challenged Americans than Obama.

As for McCain's ability to handle technology. Before becoming a Senator he operated in real time some of the most sophisticated machines on the planet. As senator he has been called the "Senate's savviest tech

in previous elections, grassroots fundraising was small time. dean certainly created buzz in 2004, and $, on the internet, but by far, obama has shown that internet fundraising is a tsunami. it dwarfs the old-boy network and other sources of funding

i think a lot of us lament the influence of money in american democracy. but i think this is the first election you would ever have republicans siding with that sentiment

I've seen claims that Obama's average donation size is $80 and that he has refused corporate donations. I've heard McCain refused corporate/lobbyist money too, but nothing about donation sizes and sources.

But what I would really like to see, from a place like factcheck.org, is a comprehensive breakdown of funding for both candidates by size, demographic, time frame and 'outside influences' like corps that lean on their employees to donate to a candidate or just a PAC - including the RNC and DNC and any oth

But what I would really like to see... is a comprehensive breakdown of funding...

The problem is, the Obama donations have been shown to not even implement the simplest of credit card validation. Their software readily accepts made-up names and addresses, gift cards, and doesn't even filter for credit cards sourced by American accounts (which is a violation of campaign finance laws to have contributions from foreign countries).

In early October, citizens [myfoxkc.com] began reporting fraudulent donations made to the Oba

Well gee, the first article is a meaningless single case of credit card fraud, if that's the best they could dig up, then they suck at digging up credit card fraud stories because such are just the nature of the beast when accepting credit cards online and the system already has mechanisms for dealing with it - as in the person who was fraudulently charged calls up and disputes the charge.

The second link to a blog was typical blog bullshit - lots of hysteria about how the website doesn't immediately puke wh

Yeah, but that record I'm pretty sure has been broken several times by Obama since.

I still wonder what the political ads would look like today had Paul somehow managed to get the Republican nomination (not that I honestly believe that the people whose votes actually count would have voted for him, regardless of the primary results). And I really wonder what the people who still approve of Bush would do, once they get out of the hospital for aneurism treatment of course.

As an aside, several have pointed out that Obama's site didn't do decent credit card validation, leading to the possiblity of fraudulent donations. I guess I can't fight that allegation, but I will bring out an important point about it.

If there are fraudulent donations, there is no possibility for quid-pro-qou.

In other words, maybe Obama is getting extra money because fraudulent donors anticipate that they will prefer his policies, but that is completely different from the case of donors making large contr

Um, you do know that the Republican candidate for President is one of the foremost sponsors of legislation to "get money out of politics"? That's why the most recent compaign finance law has his name on it.
Additionally, I have seen several sources where people were able to donate to the Obama campaign with false names and addresses. There is no evidence that the Obama fund raising is made up of small donors. The only thing we know for sure is that is made up of small donations.

From personal experience of the UK gov petitions site - many times over - it has no effect whatsoever. It's a sham, a deflection for discontentment, a way of saying they are listening to your concerns without actually doing anything about them. All that happens - no matter how many thousands of signatures a petition gets - is that it ends and then a boilerplate response says how they understand your concerns but you're wrong. It has as much effect as all the millions of protesters in London had on us going to war in Iraq. It makes you realize how little say you have and it's very depressing. As has been said before about voting - taking part only legitimises a corrupt system.

The real "full potential of the internet" is that it allows the government to ignore people on a more massive scale than ever before.

Refusing to legitimise the broken system by taking part *is* doing something. With enough weight behind it, non-participation can cause a lot of change.

Yes, in the direction opposite of reform, unless you are willing to take up arms.

I'm reminded of the first primes in SG1. They participate in an inherently evil system, but as they train their successors they teach them how to introduce moderation to the goa'uld's despotic tendencies.

They could choose not to participate, but the snake head would just find someone else to do it, and that soldier probably won't have those values.

By choosing to participate and do what little they can, they save thousands of l

And I'm sure you can point to lots of examples where people changed the world by doing nothing?

The reality is that inaction wont lead to change. If you want something different to the world we have now you have to get organised with other like-minded people, agree on what your alternative is and then work really fucking hard to achieve it. Staying at home wont solve anything and you're deluded if you think it will. People in power will just tell any journalists who ask that low voter turnout is a sign of ge

As has been said before about voting - taking part only legitimises a corrupt system.

And not taking part allows the system to do whatever it wants with impunity. Do you suggest we relinquish what power we do have and suffer the consequences? Human systems will forever be imperfect. Refusal to participate guarantees that power will be in the hands of the most corrupt. I refuse to stand idly by while history unfolds itself without contributing my own efforts, however small they may be.

We must all come together and reset society by not organizing or legitimizing candidates who reflect our values in any way with our votes. The more obsequious the populace, the more threatened the ruling class. Am I doing this right?

I keep saying it : what is needed is a switzerland-like constitution amendment. There, if a petition about a law proposition gets signed by a proportion of the population (1%, 0.5%) a referendum has to be held. If the "yes" wins, the proposition becomes law. Yes it would scale (Switzerland population is a several millions and it works fine for more than 150 years). No people would not vote things like "no tax" because as they would really be asked their opinion in a meaningful way, they would get interested

The real "full potential of the internet" is that it allows the government to ignore people on a more massive scale than ever before.

The full potential of the internet is in making information accessible. Imagine it - budget drilldowns from full budget down to agency expenditure. Everything that should be visible under FOI just a few clicks away.

If this is done properly - and that's a big if - we could have the data automatically available. We could have truly transparent government. Anything put on file is instantly available online, unless it's given a security classification. Too much for you? How about just file indices. Knowing what

1) put the US budget proposals, including all the fat and pork online for one week before it gets a vote or passage2) put all expenditures (except the dark stuff) online in lists that can be viewed; maybe streamed.3) mandate all legislation gets to be downloaded for one week before it can be voted on, for public scrutiny4) mandate all trade agreements, and all bi-lateral information is published for a week prior to sig

Do we really want Anonymous Internet Trolls giving the next US President advice? That will lead to things like making "Chocolate Rain" as the new National Anthem and making it so that Plan9 is the official and only operating system to be used for the government and instead of being called The Commander In Chief the President will be called The National Idiot in Command.

Good grief! They might even try to change the US Flag to a Goatse or Tubgirl motif.:)

I'd love to see a congressional voting site where you can vote on X numbers of issues that come before the congress, before they come before the congress. Congressmen could then use or ignore that information when making decisions.

Of course, that congressional divergence would be online for all to see. You could even see the %divergence between various senators and your personal votepoints on the issues. Does Feinstein really agree with your POV? Does Liberman? Now you can know.

Does Feinstein really agree with your POV? Does Liberman? Now you can know.

Di Fi represents only herself and her husband, though no one seems to care. I doubt putting up yet another website will change matters much. California is much changed from the days I grew up with Governor Reagan at the helm.

Senators are pretty much tenured for life, unless they do something really stupid like Larry Craig themselves. Wide Stance's "crime" was being registered Republican not Democrat and NOT just for playing footsie in the bathroom...

a UK site that aims to improve government-citizen interactions,Hahahaha. Have you ever read any of the replies to the petitions on the no.10 e-petitions site? I don't know of a single one that actually worked. Usually it's either "we're already doing this, honest" or "you don't understand the benefits of what you're signing against!"

It really serves no other purpose other than to make people think they're doing something when really they're not.

I don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to run for national office. Communicating via the internet is much cheaper than buying media time, and doing it this way doesn't leave me obligated to rich donors. Choose me based on my policy ideas, not how many times you saw my face on TV this week.

Every time you see a billboard, a full-page ad, or a TV spot, you should be saying "Who paid for that, and how much of the candidate do they own as a result?"

We've seen people like Cheney and Palin intentionally avoiding email and other traceable electronic records.
Plus dubious claims of "losing white house backup tapes". (No IT shop is perfect and some mistakes happen.)
The internet is seen as the modern version of the watergate tape recording system. It could return to haunt politicians operating illegally.

Many government agencies have to release public information whenever asked, including the school I used to work for. However, you have to figure out who to ask, and make an appointment, then fill out forms, then sometimes pay a small copying fee, then they give you copies of their budgets. Why the hell aren't all government agencies (especially the small, local ones!) putting this info on the web? I brought this up to the dean of finance and she damn near had a stroke! I would love, as a taxpayer, to be

I imagine the issue is simply money. It would cost a lot of programming time to put something good together, especially spread across all of the local departments.

The only way to convince them to do it (without major public demand) would be to show it would somehow save them money in the long run. Maybe automating output in standard formats would allow other common systems to aggregate reports and generate graphs, saving manual labor, for example.

I imagine the issue is simply money. It would cost a lot of programming time to put something good together, especially spread across all of the local departments.

The only way to convince them to do it (without major public demand) would be to show it would somehow save them money in the long run. Maybe automating output in standard formats would allow other common systems to aggregate reports and generate graphs, saving manual labor, for example.

Right. It's just a matter of priorities. As a case in point, they can do it [dc.gov] if the bureaucrats decide it's something important. But they are going to always act out of self interest, so these projects are pretty rare.

Right answer, wrong explanation. if they made it obvious and easily accesible to figure out where all of the money went, it would make it that much harder for any of it to stick to their hands. You really think people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to get a 6-figure salary, a comped mansion and an impressive title for a couple of years? You think that such people could actually manage to win?

That's actually the funny part. I was pushing our dean of finance to do it to fight the perception that we were wasting money. The school I worked for was actually very, very lean, in an area where the k-12 districts were corrupt, and wasting money. It would be good to have people look at how we spent our money, then ask the other school districts how they spend theirs. We would look like hero's, and probably get our bond levy passed.

Precisely. You can't just dump documents onto the net. You have to sterilize them first to remove social security numbers or other personal information. That takes Labor and of course money to pay the labor.

If I were president I'd pressure the Telephone companies to upgrade all their lines to DSL capability. In this day-and-age there's no excuse for having someone still stuck at 56k access. The lines are already there; even the most-distant citizen has a clean enough line to handle 1 megabit/second acc

perhaps one of the greatest benefits of IT is the possibility of establishing a direct democracy on a national scale through online referendums.

gone are the days when logistical obstacles prevented the public from directly participating in the legislative process. there's really no excuse to not involve the public in public policy decisions and create a participatory democracy at the federal level.

a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.

And now I will define what that means: "A Tyranny of the Majority to squash the right of the Minority (or the individual) with a mere 50%+1 vote." EXAMPLE: The execution of Socrates by a majority vote in the Athens democracy. Why? Simply because they didn't like him.

Pass.

A Republic of Laws that defends the rights of the individual is the surest defense against an out-of control majority. In the U.S. Republic the execution of Socrates would have never happened, because the go

In the U.S. Republic the execution of Socrates would have never happened, because the government would guarantee his right to jury trial in front of an impartial, his right to speak freely regardless of how ridiculous his idea sounded, and protected him from a Demos trying to kill him "just because we don't like him".

O_o. Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot.

Wouldn't the constitution give Socrates the right to a fair trial? Or do you plan on changing it to "" if enough people are for it?

a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.

"Direct democracy," no matter how well intentioned, is a recipe for dystopia. Every democracy worth living in has mechanisms set up to protect individuals from "the will of the people."

We don't "need" to make radical changes, at all. Sorry to get all conservative on you, but given such a high level of complexity, a established system, incorporating countless bug-fixes, is preferable to a complete re-write. A similar principle applies to software developement.

While it may be common sense that such a system will not work - it has worked in a number of places, although at smaller scales (usually direct participation in local legislation, or directing local council spending). Wikipedia was slated by many to fail, and it did not. I personally would like to see such a thing trailed - so that even if it doesn't work overall we might find positive aspects to implement.

The courts will still be there to overrule unconstitutional legislation and protect minorities from

While it may be common sense that such a system will not work - it has worked in a number of places.

You did notice the subject of the post you are responding to?;)

Wikipedia was slated by many to fail, and it did not.

Wikipedia allows people who know something about something to write what they know, to have it corrected by other someones and ultimately to be subject intervention from on high. Direct democracy would involve getting people who know nothing about anything to decide everything. OK, that's

Indeed, however direct democracy would not be the perfect government, it *could* be better than what we have now - that is all I am suggesting.

Wikipedia allows people who know something about something to write what they know, to have it corrected by other someones and ultimately to be subject intervention from on high. Direct democracy would involve getting people who know nothing about anything to decide everything.

Why do you assume that (last sentence)? Why not try adopting things from the way wikipedia is run? Direct democracy doesn't preclude things like votes being valued differently based on subject matter expertise for instance.

We (you, I and every voter) are singularly unqualified to asses the strength of prospective governments. Firstly we can't believe what the candidates or the press or the smear campaigns etc etc tell us.

We may be individually - but the result may be surprising when aggregated. We are just as vulnerable now to press and smear campaigns as we would

I see where you were going, but it was a hard journey to get there. You're arguing that like wikipedia, that certain contributors have more weight than others, thus their edits/votes are counted more. What I don't understand is your concept of weighted votes:

How would you propose a person's expertise is gauged? A test at voter registration? Is it re administered annually? Please tell me it's not take home, I don't want some Bible-thumping 7th-day Adventist cribbing the answers to the science questions

It has ruined several persons live by printing false information in their Wiki-biographies. Now imagine if wikipedia had the power to kill..... all it takes is 50%+1 majority, and your life is gone. Simply because people don't like you.

You're probably scoffing at this point, but it happened to Socrates. He exercised his right of free speech, the Athens Democracy did not like his ideas, and so they voted by majority to execute him. Had Athe

Every democracy worth living in has mechanisms set up to protect individuals from "the will of the people."

In Bush's case, the mechanism is the Secret Service, and "the will of the people" is to tar and feather him. nd that's just for starters.

Your statement is inaccurate and should be rephrased as "Every democracy currentlyworth living in"... we now have the means to devise a future democraciy that would have been unimaginable in times past.

In Bush's case, the mechanism is the Secret Service, and "the will of the people" is to tar and feather him. nd that's just for starters.

When simply voting the incumbent party out of office (or convincing oneself that the party, with its new candidate, has seriously reformed itself) would be a much more civilised response. The "tar and feather" bit is exactly what I'm afraid of, thanks.

Your statement is inaccurate and should be rephrased as "Every democracy currentlyworth living in"... we now have the

there's really no excuse to not involve the public in public policy decisions and create a participatory democracy at the federal level.

I think there's a pretty strong argument that efforts like Rock the Vote which encourage the most uninformed ignorant sectors of the population to participate in a democracy they know little about are partially responsible for the dearth of brains in elected office for the past 20 years. Now imagine if we also had "Rock the Tax Code" and "Rock the Defense Appropriations Bi

perhaps one of the greatest benefits of IT is the possibility of establishing a direct democracy on a national scale through online referendums.

The problem with direct democracy in a modern large society is not simply one of communication, it is also that the number of issues is too large for people who aren't devoted to it full-time to consider well, without being manipulated by those who are devoted to policy issues full-time. Online referenda address some of the communication issue (that is, getting peop

In many ways, it's You Tube that's killed the Republican coalition between fiscal conservatives (libertarians), social conservatives, and the "National Greatness" conservatives (the neo-cons, more or less.)

Obama's campaign helped the Republicans self-destruct by aggressively running a 50-state campaign, not a 50% +1 campaign. This meant that the RNC had to run ads to shore up its base in formerly secure red states. The problem is, the message that rallies the base - using "liberal" as a smear word, attacking patriotism, etc - alienates the middle. An ad attacking the Democrats in North Carolina will be seen by voters in New Hampshire and Minnesota, and they will find it repellent. Meanwhile, Obama does not have to appeal to the far left to mobilize his base, and his base is already extremely well mobilized. He is more or less in a situation where he never has to apologize or be sheepish about any ad with "I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message" on it, while a lot of the John McCain ads are frankly embarrassing.

The result is Republican meltdown. Fiscal conservatives already suspect that it may be easier, as in the Clinton era, to get fiscally conservative policy out of a Dem administration than out of the Republicans. It's definitely easier to push fiscal conservatism in the Democratic party than it is to push social liberalism in the Republican one. Now, the tensions between the generally secular neo-cons and the religious social conservatives (many of whom, like Huckabee, are actually comfortable with a government that provides a lot of services) is being reflected in the cracks between McCain's camp and Palin's camp.

I think what YouTube has done is put an asterisk next to Tip O'Neill's old axiom that "all politics are local." That asterisk is "but all communications are global."

They *ought* to be embarassing to Obama, but the media gives him a free pass on it, pooh-poohing his association with people who say a lot about his character, instead saying shame on McCain for daring to smear the messiah. McCain was the guy calling for reform for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but he has been labeled "part of the Bush administration" by the O-camp, and the media lets it pass. Obama has gotten by far and away the most money per year

Do you even read the news? - Obama's associations were prominently discussed in the nytimes (considered by the right to be part of the left liberal elite media, whatever the fuck that is supposed to even mean). Problem is that people aren't reacting to it like you are, so instead of correctly summising that perhaps you are reading too much into them, you instead postulate that there is a vast conspiracy to keep a lid on this.

In short, people are aware of his associations with a variety of colourful peopl

I'm afraid that the HotAir.com link is exactly what the middle finds repellent about the right. The attempt to smear by association, the claim that Obama is playing the "race card" (when he clearly isn't: anything but, frankly) - and if you read HotAir.com, particularly its comments, you read the kind of over-the-top, conspiracy-theory type thinking that is turning the Republican party into a rump party.

What McCain needed to do was to work on his positives - at one time, he was a persuasive moderate with cr

Make unsolicited bulk email (spam) a crime, and require that people OPT-IN to receive messages sent in bulk. The current 'opt-out' system in the U.S. is silly, and always was. Europeans have the more sensible opt-in system, so far more spam is U.S. in origin. It's not that hard to define; if more than 1000 people (say) receive it, and they didn't sign up for it (e.g., by signing up for a mailing list), it's spam. A law will not solve everythin

Oh come on, if YOUR computer was hawt as Cindy, would you use an PC or an Apple?

P.S. it is well documented that having his shoulders, arms, and fingers broken keeps him from using a normal computer. Could he use one of those Hawking type computer systems? Sure he could, but see the Cindy comment...

"At least in terms of campaign organizing, Obama sure does. They've found crazy ways to crowdsource all kinds of election activities, from having people call & persuade other voters with their cell phones, to using social networking to get their friends to vote. (Mind you, I hate the buzzword "crowdsource" but I don't know what else to call it.) If they're half as good at implementing that when in office as they were building it from nothing, we can expect considerable improvements."

Nah if they appealed Bill Clinton's impeachment they'll appeal Barack Obama's impeachment as well for the same reasons.

Look at all of the stuff George W. Bush is accused of doing, and they still can't impeach him. That is because they don't have enough evidence to start an impeachment trial, but what they do have is accusations, rumors, gossip, and opinions, but no "hard evidence" beyond a reasonable doubt. There wouldn't be enough "hard evidence" for Obama either even if he did make the album public becaus

Nah if they appealed Bill Clinton's impeachment they'll appeal Barack Obama's impeachment as well for the same reasons.

What makes you think an impeachment can be appealed? Who would hear it? The Supreme Court? They're the judges in the impeachment, they can't also hear an appeal, and there's nobody else left. If the President is successfully impeached, he's out, no ifs, ands or buts. Judging from what you've written, you think that Clinton's impeachment hearings before Congress were an appeal. They